I considered Return on Influence for my fall 2015 social media class. But ultimately decided not to use it because I had 2 other great books I wanted to use: Likeable Social Media and Your Brand: The Next Media Company (Thanks to Karen Freberg for bringing Your Brand to my attention). Still, I think it is a great read and recommend it for a class. In fact, two of my students have read this book and both highly enjoyed it. There’s a high chance I will be implementing the book next Fall.

A Quick Summary of ROI

In ROI, Schaefer explores the notion of the citizen influencer and how social media has empowered everyday citizens. While we’re all familiar with this concept, the book explores the concept of influence with an aim to help one understand why we’re influenced, the type of person who influences us, and how influencers can be identified and leveraged.

Schaefer does the reader a solid by reviewing Robert Cialdini’s seminal work on the subject of influence, Influence: Science and Practice (Cialdini’s book was a favorite of mine in college. I highly recommend it). Specifically, Schaefer explores authority, likeability, consistency and scarcity, as well as social proof and reciprocity. He relays how these concepts relate to “your personal power and influence” online.

Towards the middle, Schaefer delves into the controversial industry of influence scoring, focusing primarily on Klout. He looks at the spark behind the company and provides a history of how the company came to be. Klout was an idea that few believed in when it was conceived.

Klout helped usher in a new era of influence marketing – the primary focus of the book. While influence marketing grew up with Jell-O and Tupperware, quick, easy, accessible social scoring by Klout and its competitors have proven a game changer. From TV shows to cars – the author provides several cases of companies harnessing Klout to identify influencers in a specific market niche, build relationships, and drive desired outcomes. Best practices are discussed. There are some very creative examples here and Schaefer helps the reader see just how powerful citizen influencers can be.

Of course, we’re all wondering – how do I raise my Klout score? Schaefer explores factors that influence Klout scores, those that try to game the system, how the system has evolved in response, and the pros and criticisms of how Klout scores are ranked.

In fact, a healthy portion of the book is dedicated to exploring criticisms and shortfalls with social scoring. After all, social scoring is still very new. The book ends with an exploration of the future of social scoring and some sobering thoughts on potential societal impacts of social scoring, asking whether such a system merely perpetuates of ‘rich get richer’ mentality.

Are we but the total of our Klout score? And if we are, is that a good thing?

A Few Thoughts on Using this Text in the Classroom

While buzz around Klout and other social scoring services seems to have died down a bit, there is much to learn from Return on Influence. Whether our students go on to use Klout scores to identify influencers or not, they stand to benefit from understanding the vital role of influencers in diffusing innovations on today’s social web.

If you participate in the Hootsuite University program, you can teach students to search Hootsuite by Klout score. Reading this text would greatly enhance their understanding of how Klout works.

As my students know, I’m a Paul Lazarsfeld fan! I discuss the notion of opinion leaders and the two-step (multi-step) flow of communication in my more introductory courses. I discuss diffusion in my social media class. And my campaigns students identify key influencers as part of their projects. As such, ROI is a natural extension of this part of their education, bridging tho idea of opinion leaders with the social web. In fact, I’ve discussed online influence and social scoring in my social media class. But students have expressed that they struggle with this concept. In this way, the text would add a great deal of value.

Lastly, throughout the book, a number of other familiar topics such as social capital and the strength of weak ties are discussed that may help students gain a better grasp on these subjects. I believe these important concepts of social networks are foundational knowledge in a social media class.

Taken together, Return on Influence is a great read for anyone wanting to learn more about the world of social scoring and its role in influence marketing today.

We’re facing over a foot of snow here for sure. Our driveway is measuring 18 inches! Though I’ve got a ton of projects to work on and a puppy who is getting restless since the snow is too tall for her to get outside (see Instagram photos on the column on the right, and below), I want to take a quick minute before strapping my snowshoes on to share a few articles from around the web.

In a related vein, I would love your feedback: With all these snow days, how are you handing your classes? Are you Skyping in? Posting assignments on course management systems? I always find it difficult when classes get canceled. The lack of continuity and the inability to work with students in class is difficult to overcome virtually. But I think I could do a better job in this area. So any thoughts or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

To the articles:

What’s the future of organic on social media? Content Marketing and Paid Media on Social Media

Second, not too long ago I wrote about the future of content marketing in 2014. I want to follow-up with three articles that provide further discussion of content marketing in 2014.

So the question remains – if paid is indeed becoming the pathway to audiences on social media, what will the impact be for strategic communication folks? The Social Mouth’s blog post paints a fairly dire picture, if accurate – indicating that access to publics will be increasingly difficult via organic and that paid may be a must. Or, are these worries overblown, these predictions incorrect? Perhaps I am missing it, but I haven’t seen a lot coming from the PR blogs about this. Just some food for thought.

What’s coming?

I’ve got a few great posts I’ve been working on ready to release in the next few weeks. So look forward to those! For now, stay warm!

While I don’t pretend to have the answers to these questions, I wanted to share the problem here on the blog and put out a few related articles that you may enjoy reading. I hope it helps you jump into the conversation (see the great thread of comments on Gary’s post – cited below)!

So what happened?

Facebook made a change to its newsfeed algorithm resulting in a large decline in visibility of branded Facebook posts in an individual’s news feed.

The impact? Anecdotally, my wife, who runs the Facebook page for an international non-profit, said the change has resulted in a recent decline in her organization’s Facebook page stats.

What’s the Effect?

Gary argues in his post that it is the result of an effort by Facebook to drive more paid advertising (read his post for explanation). As a result, he says, organic won’t be enough to sustain a brand on Facebook.

Mark Schaefer posted a comment in Gary’s blog post that adds further clarity to the issue. In it, Mark is quoting a Facebook exec writing about the change: “On a given day, when the average person visits their News Feed, there are an average of 1,500 possible stories we can show. As a result, competition for each News Feed story is increasing. Pages will likely see changes in distribution resulting in a decline in organic reach.”

As noted above, Mark Schaefer (@markwschaefer) recently posted about “Content Shock,” his term for the saturated marketplace of content marketing. In essence, he argues that as more people enter the content marketplace, competition for attention increases, and attention becomes increasingly fragmented. This makes sense! But this content is free. So how do you compete with the limitless supply of competition also creating free content? Mark argues that this flood favors those entities with big budgets, and that the cost of social media is rising. Read his post to get the details and more on the why.

Lastly, in a related vein I recently read an article on Shift titled “How Content Marketing Could Kill PR.” In essence, the piece argues that due to the flood of content being created, PR folks are being asked to pitch cruddy content. This may result in a loss of credibility, as those on the receiving end of the pitch are dealt sub par content. In their words, “What could kill public relations is not the content marketing itself, but increasing pressure from brands to pitch mediocre or bad content.” It is a really interesting read and one I recommend. So what to do? The simple solution may be “Create Great Content.” But will that really work? Will there be increasing need for PR professionals to help organizations break through this content shocked ocean of content and reach a targeted public?

What do you think? What is the future of content marketing? Is the “market saturated”? And if so, what will the effect be in 2014? How will organizations respond? Is the playing field no longer level for “the little guy?” Will the cost of social media become prohibitive?

Just some thoughts and questions for your Thursday! I hope you have a great one!

For some time before starting Social Media Syllabus, I’d thought about blogging again the way I think about getting back in shape to play lacrosse again or making homemade bread like Kelin and I used to – as a distant and improbable ‘wouldn’t it be nice’ scenario. I had started a blog briefly in graduate school, but being too busy, I shut it down. And honestly, my first blog lacked focus and intent. I hadn’t really thought through who I was writing to and why they should read my blog. I just wanted to blog and so I began. Needless to say, it didn’t go anywhere. Isn’t that the case with so many blogs?

So when I got my hands on Born to Blog after first hearing about Schaefer’s Tao of Twitter, I was excited and anxious. Clearly I wasn’t “born to blog,” I thought, reflecting on my first blogging failure. So I wasn’t really planning on starting a blog again. But a few chapters later I found myself plotting out Social Media Syllabus and telling myself, ‘this time it will be different.’

The book Born to Blog offers readers 3 important things:

The “how to” and motivation to become a successful blogger

A clear understanding of the value of blogging

A roadmap for planning, launching, and maintaining a successful blog.

The first part of the book focuses on motivating the reader and explaining what it takes to become a successful blogger, emphasizing the 5 common types of bloggers: dreaming, storytelling, persuading, teaching, and curating.

Readers are encouraged to determine what type of blogger they are and to harness their strengths to be themselves (not surprisingly, I found myself to fit the ‘teaching’ type). The writing style makes the book approachable and friendly. The reader can tell that the authors want to help, want you to be successful, and want you to not only have the knowledge to succeed but feel that you are capable of succeeding at blogging. The authors offer a number of great examples of brave bloggers sharing their story as well as their own personal anecdotes. This book is not filled with hype or promises that your blog will be successful. There are many out there selling snake oil in the social space. There are no illusions or “get rich quick” schemes. The plan the authors put forward clearly requires a great deal of work and commitment on your behalf. Mark and Stanford are clear that blogging is a marathon, not a sprint, telling the reader they will need tenacity and encouraging them to “not give up.”

Secondly, the authors concisely explain the value of blogging for a business in clear terms. The focus of the book is primarily on the use of blogging as a tool for business, a la content marketing. (There is a brief section in the back on personal blogging that I wish was placed earlier in the book). In this section, the authors tackle many of the common questions or concerns that companies face from “How often should we blog?” to the possibility of negative comments, or maybe worse no comments at all!, to potential legal issues

While the book isn’t quite as in-depth in terms of offering advice on how to create a content plan and calendar as Content Rules, it offers a great overview and enough to get you started. The authors do a strong job in the middle section of the book tackling important issues surrounding finding and nurturing blog contributors, developing a content plan, uncovering valuable content within your own company your readers want, and more. Readers should keep in mind that this is a shorter book tackling blogging specifically. I would recommend Content Rules, a book we’ll be using in my Writing Across Platforms class, as a supplement to this book.

I appreciate the emphasis on the theme in this book that blogging is a journey of personal growth. As bloggers, the authors remind us that we cannot expect to be perfect. We are constantly growing, learning, and hopefully improving. I have used Born to Blog as a guide and have turned to the book on many occasions for help with questions I’ve had along the way.

if you’re looking to get into blogging or improving an existing blog, whether personally or for a business, I highly recommend this book. I plan on using it for my social media class this upcoming fall (see social media syllabus. You can also learn more about the class) as the text for our class semester-long blogging assignment. I hope the students will find it as approachable, motivating, and informative as I have!

Do you have any great books you recommend for bloggers? If you’ve read Born to Blog, what did you think?